Thoughts on coming out. 16 months into the Covid pandemic.

Baby Loaf checks on what I am writing

I had begun blogging regularly again once the pandemic hit us last year. I used the blog as a diary of sorts. The way I did when I had first started blogging in October 2007. Today’s entry is in that vein.

I stepped out for a Finely Chopped Consulting assignment yesterday. It involved my going to a five star hotel at Marine Drive to take part in a tasting session and to give my point of view to help the client’s NPD efforts. I am not at liberty to say more at this stage though I was not sworn to secrecy. Old market research agency habits you see.

The two hour long activity involved a bunch of us sitting around a table and trying the products. There were perhaps 6 to a table with a fair amount of gap between us. We were wearing masks but obviously took them off while in the tasting session. To avoid taking public transport, I hired a driver and went with Princess Lea. Our once new and now rather weatherworn Honda City.

The client was a dream client. Brief to pitch to project took 2 or 3 days, there was no bargaining and the money hit my account a bit after I returned home. If only all clients were like this!

Then decided that he is better off sleeping outside

K and I have not stepped out much in recent times except for essentials like vet, doctor or bank visits and our walks. K has gone to the parlour a couple of times and I have stepped out for haircuts. Essentials!

K does most of our shopping online and I call in for fish from Poonam at Khar market. We have the vegetable cart guy down our lane for veggies and if he does not come, we call from Lalu’s. For chicken it is Abba Broilers. We do not buy mutton or pork much as folks often send us dishes made with these.

K is working from home. Her office might open in mid-November. We have got quite comfortable with this way of life. I do not know if fear keeps us in. Or inertia. I have been getting a lot of invites to on ground events of late which I have politely declined. The idea of being with people in a physical place still seems a bit strange. We have gone out to restaurants though. Usually it has just been the two of us at the table. We went to a friend’s place for dinner on Saturday. A friend who drops in at our place often. There were three more guests. Common friends whom we had not met since after the pandemic. It felt good and like the old times. Barring the fact that we did not hug or shake hands.

I saw social media posts from Kolkata a day before this dinner. It was of a launch of a bar there and I saw tons of folks, including bloggers, happily dancing away and wryly wondered, ‘is the pandemic over’?

Though I must confess that when K and I are at restaurants, or when we went to the dinner at our friends or when I was at the workshop ( where everyone shook hands and I kept sanitising my hand each time as if I was George Bush junior), we were in the flow of the moment and did not worry much about Covid.

I guess it all comes down to how ready one is to step out. And how fed up one is of not doing so.

I do not have the answers. In case you are wondering, we are both double vaccinated.